If you thought David Lynch was out there, wait until you read his book. In recent months, the oddball auteur behind Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet has been stumping for his spiritual discipline of choice, Transcendental Meditation. In January, he’ll issue a book on the practice, which critics deride as an Eastern-flavored cousin to Scientology and Kabbalah.

Lynch makes no secret that Catching the Big Fish is a tool to win converts. “The book is about his commitment to Transcendental Meditation and his wish to spread his beliefs in what it can accomplish,” says his editor, Mitch Horowitz. The filmmaker, who learned the method from His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who was famously dismissed as a fraud by his onetime pupil John Lennon), has said he practices TM for 20 minutes every day.